Raleigh Maker Faire 2012

As [Caleb] mentioned earlier, I attended the Raleigh Maker Faire this year as an exhibitor. Although the table was for my personal site, some of you might have noticed that I was wearing a sweet [HAD] shirt and dispensing our stickers (which seemed to fly off the table). The event was extremely fun from the “other end of the table,” and I very much enjoyed meeting everyone. If you’re on the fence about showing off your stuff at one of these events, my advice would be to absolutely go for it!

The event itself is staffed entirely by volunteers, and Raleigh was able to attract more people this year than ever before. Thanks especially to [Kevin Gunn] and all of the volunteers for coordinating and setting everything up. Everyone was extremely helpful and the event was easy to find and prep for.

One warning though, if you do decide to set up a booth at a Faire, expect to talk a lot. You’ll feel like you’re among friends though, and you’re probably an expert (or at least can fake it) at whatever you’re displaying, so it’s really fun! I’ll be doing several more posts on this event, so be sure to check back, especially if you attended!

If you decide it’s not fun, you can always just hide behind your equipment…

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17 thoughts on “Raleigh Maker Faire 2012”

I didn’t attend, but I was president of Fablocker (the 3D printer folks featured in the photo) until last year – thanks a ton HAD for including us in your picture!

Anyone local to Winston-Salem, check out our website at fablocker.org and come to an upcoming open house night! We hold open house M-Th each week after work and there’s usually events going on F-Su to attend as well.

Yes, it was in Raleigh, at the Kerr Scott Building at the State Fairgrounds, but it’s called Maker Faire North Carolina, not Maker Faire Raleigh. It included folks from Hackerspace Charlotte, ShopBot, SplatSpace, and Spoonflower (all in Durham), the Alamance Makers Guild from Burlington, and many others.

Thanks for the Hack a Day love! Maker Faire: NC was a great success: so many people came in to look, but went home to MAKE. Isn’t that what it’s all about? It was really exciting to be a part of it, and I’m thrilled it worked so well for you and all our other Makers. I’d like to send a shout out to all the volunteer staff at MF:NC (including my daughter, Ariel, who designed the “pod” floor layout that worked so well this year) and a special THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Jon Danforth, our director, who gives up his free time year-round to make Maker Faire: NC happen!

Thank you for helping to bring such a great event to life. If I could suggest one thing for next year though; please put up more signs around the fairgrounds. We made it all the way to the gun show on the other side before we found someone who knew where it was (and most people we asked said they had already been asked by multiple people). Meanwhile, the gun show had signs with arrows all the way to the Maker Faire.

Loved going to this; my wife took me as a father’s day present. I kind of expected it to be bigger with all of the engineering in the Triangle area; NC State should have had more of a presence there(but it is summer break, so I can’t say I’m too surprised). Hopefully this event will continue to grow. Pro-tip; take your significant other, by the end my wife was almost begging me to build us a 3d printer.

Yeah, the shear number of choices is kind of blowing my mind. I have a metal recycler nearby that sells aluminum stock by the pound, so I think I may want to use some of that to do a beefed up Mendel or RepRap.

My son and I attended this weekend and it was a BLAST! Thank you Maker Faire for such a great day, and thank you HackaDay for mentioning it a couple of days ahead. I had no idea that it was happening, and we have wanted to attend a Faire for a number of years, but there is not one close to us. (Raleigh is a four and a half hour drive, and it is the closest Faire.) My son says it was the best day of his life! :) We will definitely be attending next year.